The story seemingly has nothing to do with health and fitness, but I think sharing it could help yours. I know it helped mine.

Mike Miller’s a good friend and a guy I raced against for years who peaked a little late or he would’ve become a domestic road cycling pro. He had the lungs, had the legs, had the results, and he still has all that - including the desire.

In his early 40s, he shifted his focus from road racing to track racing. He’s now a seven-time Master’s National champion, and at 52 goes to the podium more often than a guy with a bad back goes to the chiropractor.

I wanted to write about a training ride we did years ago for a RoadBikeRider.com article (my other writing gig), so I emailed him to double check the particulars. We emailed back and forth a few times after that.

One of his arrived after I finished a subpar bicycle ride that - I’m not proud to admit - had me in a foul mood. In it, he wrote: ”The older I get the more I realize it’s more about friendships than wins. I still remember rides home from the Derby - me on your wheel. Thanking god you were there to get me home.”

After reading his email three or four times, I was also thanking god. Thanking god he had sent it.

Suddenly I was feeling good, really good. My friend’s words had provided perspective, made me realize I had been foolish to allow a ride to adversely affect my mood.

And grateful for our rides together and our friendship.

I can’t think of a better example of how a simple display of friendship helps you and keeps helping - if you keep remembering. (The reason for what’s after the dash will soon become clear.)

Before I decided this story was the one to tell, I flipped through my mental Rolodex and recalled other times when friends said or did things that meant so much to me. Like the time two from Palmerton took off work and drove to Reading unannounced to attend my mother’s viewing.

Doing so gave me a sense of well-being and contentment far beyond “warm and fuzzy.”

I bet your Rolodex has more than a few, too. So why don’t you give yourself an early Christmas present and take some time to browse through yours before your Saturday really gets going?

If doing so doesn’t convince you that cultivating friendship is as vital to your well-being as consuming healthy food, consider what’s contained in a scholarly publication released in November 2016 from the University of North Dakota. It’s written by Alan R. King, Tiffany Russell, and Amy C. Veith and titled “Friendships and Mental Health Functioning.”

In it, the authors cite studies that show close friendships lead to higher degrees of self-esteem, sensitivity, loyalty, better adjustments to the vicissitudes of daily life, fewer feelings of anxiety and hostility, greater enjoyment overall, and a higher quality of life overall than those who feel they lack friends.

But just like certain diets and exercises, certain friendships will not be right for you and could even harm you. The aforementioned paper also refers to studies showing friendships with less-than-stable people or downright bad human beings can undo all the previously listed good.

In addition, while scientific studies should provide direction and drive in your attempts to improve health and fitness, both direction and drive are further honed if you consider and incorporate the personal component. For me, gestures of friendship like the ones I’ve just written about make me optimistic.

And optimism as long as it’s bridled by realism, helps your health. For starters, it seems to increase lifespan.

An article first published in August 2019 online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found, after “adjusting for demographics and health conditions,” the women studied who registered in the top quartile for optimism lived 14.9% longer than those women in the lowest quartile. Moreover, both women and men in the highest quartile for optimism were between 150 and 170% more likely to live to the age of 85.

Another study that should make you upbeat about being upbeat focuses on how an optimistic view helps you keep something you certainly don’t want to lose: your memory.

A study performed at Northwestern University and published online in October 2021 by Psychological Science, assessed about 1,000 middle-aged and older U.S. adults once during each of the last three decades. Each time, participants were asked to describe positive emotions they experienced in the last month.

In the final two assessments, they were also given a memory performance test.

While the researchers fully expected memory to decline with age, co-author of the study Emily Hittner explained in a news release “individuals with higher levels of positive effect [more good memories] had a less steep decline.”